As I walked off the sweaty, stuffy airplane I lugged my heavy carry-on bags behind me. We had a connecting flight in Paris on Air France, so we had just gotten off our second flight of that hot July day. Everyone had to go to luggage claim to get their suitcases before we caught a taxi.

My mom, brother, and myself were all getting antsy because it was midnight already and we all had work early the next morning. I watched the millions of bags and suitcases circle around and around the belt. I purposely bought a bright pink suitcase with neon green tassels hanging off of it so it was easy to identify. We waited for a half hour and did not see our bags, so we ventured away to another baggage claim.

I leaned against the wall patiently waiting for our bags to appear, but for some reason they never did. Maybe they are still on the plane? My brother glanced behind us to a large group of people surrounding a sign. We walked over and saw a list of over 10 names. At the very top of that list was our last name, “Enella.” A tall blonde woman, who worked for Air France, approached us with a clipboard full of papers and forms to fill out. Everyone was so confused and had millions of questions. We found out our luggage did not make it to our conveyor belt. And that was because they were still in Paris France!

I panicked. I had everything important to me in my suitcase. All my clothes, chargers, shoes, money, and jewelry. I needed them to go to work the next day and to carry on with my life. My mom was getting so nervous as to how we would get them back and why they were still there. We were told that there was not enough space for everyone’s bags, so they had to leave a few off for the next flight. Especially, after a long day of traveling (from Barcelona to a layover in Paris to our arrival in New York) we just wanted to go home and relax but we had to worry about where our bags were.

Our driver had been waiting for us for over an hour. We now had to leave… empty handed. My mom was so angry and stressed that she slammed the car door and thought about all the things she needed right now, that was in Paris.

Our family continued to go about out daily lives like returning to work, going to practice and running errands. It was challenging to get up everyday without things like your toothbrush, hairbrush, phone chargers, clothes, shoes, extra money and even expensive jewelry.

Four days later our suitcases were hand delivered to our home with an apology letter. We were all ecstatic and relieved to finally have all our important things in our own possession again.